The Lady of Han-Gilen (38 page)

Elian turned. She faced Lord Garin. Steel glittered a hair’s
breadth from his throat, but no closer. “Where is your prince?” she asked him.

The Wolf’s eye was steady and fearless and very much amused.
“Dead,” he answered her, “majesty. It seemed fair enough, upon consideration. A
life for a royal life.”

She tilted her head, studying him. “Why?”

“Because, your majesty, I am a loyal man.”

“Loyal to nothing but his treachery!” Cuthan’s voice was raw
with hate. “Through him was our king betrayed. Through him was our king
destroyed. On his head be it. Murder. Murder of the Sunborn.”

A deep snarl ran through the ranks, a snarl that turned to a
howl. Elian ignored it, meeting the despair in Cuthan’s eyes. “But,” she said,
“Mirain is not dead.”

Hope made him beautiful again. He looked so young, so easily
moved, like a child. Even in her numbness she found the ghost of a smile for
him.

He turned, stumbling, blinded with tears, but his voice was
as splendid as it had ever been. Soft at first, full of wondering joy. “Did you
hear?” Louder then, clear and free and glad, ringing in the morning. “Men of
the Sun, did you hear? The king is not dead. He lives. An-Sh’Endor lives!”

Mirain lived, he breathed; he seemed to sleep. But he did
not wake.

Elian sat by the bed in the chamber of Garin the elder.
People came and went. They tried to be quiet, a sickroom stillness, muting the
thud of booted feet, lowering battle-roughened voices.

It mattered Little to her and less to Mirain whether they
whispered or shouted. There were wounded to settle, prisoners to guard, watches
to set; and it kept coming back to her. She was the queen. It was her place to
rule.

Sometimes her brother sat with her. More often it was Vadin.
He was not like the rest; he was quiet, he did not intrude. She could forget
that he was there.

Halenan could not efface himself so perfectly. He was
restless, like fire. He persisted in chattering.

“I have his lordship under guard,” he said. He had been
drinking ale, from the scent that came in with him; he lowered himself to the
floor at her feet.

It was not all weariness. He had taken a slight wound in the
side, and it had begun to stiffen.

She touched it with hand and healing; he sighed. “Ah, that’s
better.” He swallowed a yawn. “Lord Garin is under guard, but free to go where
he likes. The guard is mostly for his sake; the men don’t love him. Not in the
least.”

“Mirain rather likes him.” She laid her hand on the still
brow. With the women of her Guard, she had bathed and tended him and combed out
his many tangles. His braid lay tamed on his shoulder.

Halenan leaned back against her knee and yawned outright. “I
feel as if I haven’t slept for a Greatmoon-cycle, what with settling the men in
that infernal cave and fretting over you in this infernal castle, and all
that’s come after. You vanished from power’s sight, you know. One moment I
looked and you were there, passing Garin’s gate. The next, you were gone. I
went a little wild. More than a little.” Vadin looked at him, brows up. He
grimaced. “Very much more than a little. Yonder savage had to knock me down and
sit on me, or I’d have sent the whole troop against Garin, then and there.
‘Wait,’ he said, as if he weren’t twitching himself, and starting at shadows.
‘Give it time.’ I had to: he wouldn’t let me up, else.

“We waited till sundown. Just barely. Then we divided our
forces. Half we left to guard the cave and Lord Casien’s company, and to face
any force that might come through the valley. They put on a brave show of
numbers, with fires and tents and a wall of tethered seneldi. The rest of us
went under the mountain.

“We paused in a cavern only a little smaller than the outer
hall, with a deep pool in it. Vadin’s people had penned their seneldi there,
under guard. We gathered all but a few of the sentries and went on.

“We went carefully, and slowly enough to madden me. But for
all of that, we kept going astray, ending in a blind passage or a sudden chasm;
or hearing the clatter of armed men, and scrambling for hiding places, and
hearing the noises fade away among the tunnels.

“An eon after we began, we saw a light. The rest ran for
cover yet again, but I’d had my fill of prudence. I flattened myself into a
fold of the wall and tried not to breathe. The light came toward us. It was
moving fast, and it was quiet; I could just hear footsteps, booted but running
very light. When it passed me, I pounced.” He rubbed his side. “I got this for
my pains. He was a big lad, that one, and vicious as a cornered ul-cat. We
rolled on the floor, snapping and snarling and doing our utmost to throttle one
another.

“Until Vadin swooped over us and thrust a torch in our
faces. We kept up the fight for a bit, for the fighting’s sake, but in the end
we stopped and burst out laughing. It was that or howl. I’d been getting the
worst of it; Cuthan picked me up and dusted me off and was most apologetic.

“Never mind that,” said Vadin. “What news from Garin?”

“Cuthan sobered all at once. It was bad, I’d known it
already; I hadn’t known how bad. He’d been lost as we were, and he’d had a guide,
a rat of Garin’s whom he’d caught and tamed at sword’s point. They’d managed to
pass the first windings of the maze, which were full of armed men: we’d been
hearing them as they mustered, through a trick of the tunnels. We were
fortunate they hadn’t heard us; or maybe they’d taken us for more of their own.

“Cuthan’s rat was killed in a pitfall that nearly took
Cuthan with it; he went on by instinct and what power he had. It was enough to
take him to us. It just barely sufficed to lead us all on the right path,
armies be damned.

“That was a wild march,” said Halenan. “The way was steep in
places, and it was infernally dark. I prayed to every god I knew, and to
Avaryan over them all, that the sorceress wasn’t looking for a blaze of power
under the earth; because Vadin and I had left off trusting our mortal senses.
It was a labyrinth we were racing through, with no way out but the castle, and
no time to spare, and precious little light; and enemies all around us.” He
shuddered. “Avaryan grant I never see such a devil’s lair again!

“We met the first of the enemy somewhat closer to the castle
than to the cave. They weren’t looking for us. We took them by surprise, but
they were no fools. No tyros, either. If Lord Garin hasn’t tried a little
reiving in his father’s line, then he has a liking for drilling his troops in
mazes.

“He certainly keeps his loot there—and the loot of the past
dozen generations with it. If we can haul even half of it out of here, every
man of us will be as rich as a lord.”

“You always were greedy,” said Elian.

He snarled in mock warning; she ruffled his hair and tried
to smile.

“Ah well,” he said, smiling back, “we weren’t paying much
attention to the treasure trove while we were in it. We were too busy trying to
get out. I was desperate; I could feel morning coming, and I knew when the duel
began. I think I lost what little wits I had left. I know Vadin did. We left
most of the company to mop up behind us and flamed our way through, clear to
the castle.

“Your guards were ready and willing and at least as wild as
we were. We had hell’s own time to find the way up to the mountain, and a
castleful of people in our way, but they weren’t quarreling with power. Much.

“We found the door and the tunnel, and we found the open
air. And there you were at battle’s end. I thought”—he faltered, which was
utterly unlike him—“I thought Mirain was dead.”

“He . . . almost . . . was.”

Halenan caught her hands. “Lia. Little sister. It’s over
now.”

She looked at him. She was calm; it was he who was shaking.
“It’s not, really,” she said.

His head tossed from side to side. His grip was painfully
tight. “It’s only exhaustion, and power stretched as far as it will go. He’ll
sleep the sun around and wake up ravenous and growling, like a cave bear in the
spring.”

“He’ll sleep.” Her glance strayed to the bed. “I caused it,
you know. The end. She almost had him, but she let him go too soon. She broke
the law and the shield and all honor, and turned to me, and tried to make me
fight with her. Maybe her mind was breaking. Maybe she thought Mirain was too
weak to trouble with; or too strong to stand against alone. Maybe—maybe she
knew what she was doing. To him, to me, and to herself. He had power left; she
could not but have known it. Enough to wake what slept in the stone, and to aim
it when it woke. It carried him with it. It drained him dry, and dropped him
when it was done.”

She freed her hands from her brother’s, to take Mirain’s
slack one. “If he wakes—if he even wants to wake—he’ll have nothing left. No
power, and very little consciousness. You know how it is when the body uses
itself up . . . it dies. Or its life is only a shadow of what it
was before.”

“No,” said Halenan.

“She said he was a danger,” Elian said. “To the whole world.
She showed me what he would do to it. She wanted me to stop him. Because I
could. And maybe I did. By listening. By coming so close to betraying him.”

She caught Mirain’s hand, anchoring herself to it. It was
warm, but no strength lingered in it. His life flickered low and slow.

Halenan lurched to his feet, all long limbs and coppery
hair, awkward as he had not been since he was a boy. But it was a man who flung
down his sheathed sword and swore in a soft deadly voice, the most terrible
oaths he knew.

His grief woke something in her. Something she had striven
to suppress. Awareness; understanding. Feeling.

She could not feel. She dared not. She had to be strong; to
smile; to be queen. They needed her, these men, these few women, this empire.
And this stranger within her, who drifted quiescent, invisible, all but
imperceptible, yet mighty in what it would become.

Oh, clever Mirain, even at the end of all he was. He sat on
death’s threshold but advanced no farther, nor retreated, binding her to her
own flesh, to the child he had begotten and the empire he had won.

Rage she could allow; could welcome. She regarded the still
and lifeless face, the lips curved in the shadow of a smile. He thought he had
won. He thought he could trick her, bind her, leave her to bear his burdens.

Better the harem. There at least the chains were visible,
the guards stood before the bolted gates.

Her brother was gone, fled. Poor Hal. He loved Mirain almost
as much as she.

He could go and weep, and hammer down a wall or two, and
whip the castle into order. He was not saddled with an empire and its heir.

She looked up. Eyes rested on her, dark as Mirain’s, deep
and quiet. They did not condescend to judge her.

She spoke with great care. “Only once,” she said, “has
Mirain ever argued me down. That was when he ran after his fate into Ianon, and
I knew well enough that mine was in Han-Gilen. He doesn’t even have that
defense now.”

Vadin sat back in his chair. It was a little small for him;
he looked extraordinarily long and lean and angular.

He was thinner than she remembered; he seemed older. Amid
the copper braided into his beard, she glimpsed a thread of silver.

He could not have had an easy time of it, abandoning his
lordship and his lady and his people on a moment’s notice, in the jaws of
winter, at the command of a haughty girlchild; with Mirain’s death to face if
he failed, or even if he did not.

He mustered a smile, though it fled swiftly. “You’ve looked
after Mirain rather thoroughly, haven’t you? I didn’t say you had to marry
him.”

“If you had, I wouldn’t have done it.”

He actually laughed. But again, not for long. Mirain
weighted them both like a stone, breathing just visibly, alive and no more.

Elian spoke to him, not caring that Vadin heard.
“Ziad-Ilarios loves me still. He’ll be emperor in his time, and he’ll wed as his
duty commands. He’ll grow and change, and the change will be bitter, a chilling
and a darkening. All his gold will turn to grey.

“But I can go to him. I can tell him I love him. He will
believe me, because he longs to, and it will be true. He won’t grow old in
bitterness. I won’t let him. I can do that, Mirain. I can even make him accept
your child, for my sake. Your empire won’t last, but I’ll see to it that your
seed rules in Asanion. And I’ll have a man, not a corpse, to share my bed.”

No consciousness stirred behind the mask of his face; no
power glimmered about it.

“Your empire is dead already. Father will try to keep it alive;
Vadin will want to, and Hal. I could, maybe, if I would. Except that I’ll be in
Asanion and not wanting any rivals. It’s rather a pity. There was so much we
were going to do. Your city, that would be the most beautiful in the world.
Your throne in it, and your tower atop Endros, built with songs and with power.
Your priesthood—now you’ll never be browbeaten into taking the high seat, and
priestesses will go on in their useless fidelity to the god, and the order will
fade and crumble, all its promises and all its prophecies come to nothing. I’ll
never have my company, not only my Guard but a whole fighting force of women,
the Queen’s Own, that was going to set a few more of us free. You’ll never
break the slave trade out of Asanion; we’ll never climb Mount Avaryan or look
on the sea. The Exile will have won after all. We’ll never prove that her
vision of fire and death was a lie. All because you’re too cowardly feeble to
face the world again.”

Her eyes bled tears. She dashed them away, but they would
not stop for that. “Damn you! If you don’t come to, I’ll kill myself!”

He was far beyond either hearing or heeding.

She seized him, shaking him. His head rolled slackly. His
eyelids never flickered. She sobbed, half in fury, half in burning, tearing
grief, clutching him, rocking him, blind and mad.